While the buzz has certainly picked up, the autonomous vehicle market is still underhyped. Next to the Internet, it’s the most profound and transformative technology innovation in our lifetimes. Most people predict it will be 20 years or more until true, level 4 or level 5 autonomous vehicles will be on the roads. But it’s going to happen much sooner. As I shared on stage at the Web Summit this morning, here are the 10 reasons why I believe level 4 or 5 autonomy will be widespread within the next 5-10 years:

Better for the environment: with fewer cars on the road, nearly all of them electric, pollution from cars will drastically decrease.

Less congestion: our cities are locked-up with traffic congestion, making it tough to get around. Autonomous vehicles will decrease the traffic congestion with more predictable transit, fewer vehicles, and no need to find that elusive parking spot.

More productive society: instead of sitting behind the wheel on increasingly lengthy daily commutes, we will be able to rest, work, and relax. This will increase productivity, while decreasing stress and road rage.

Inclusive transit for everyone: autonomous vehicles will be safer for our aging population, allowing seniors to retain independence longer, as well as more accessible for blind, deaf, and other individuals who couldn’t otherwise drive.

More affordable: the need for car ownership will be greatly reduced as more people take advantage of ride- and car-sharing, decreasing the amount of money spent on vehicles, insurance, registration, and maintenance.

The technology is improving: the cost of hardware is dropping rapidly, so component pieces integral to autonomous driving such as LIDARs and cameras are more accessible. More engineers are developing expertise in related fields, creating better software and hardware.

The innovation centre is just the latest sign of the US networking giant’s commitment to the IoE trend. Cisco expects the trend to generate almost $US19 trillion ($24 trillion) across the next decade, including $94 billion in Aust­ralia.

IPv6 a new computer protocol for the Internet has now made it possible to connect the entire world to the Internet and they are calling it “Internet of Things” or IoT.

We are not just talking about a few connect devices like we have today, they mean everything on the earth will be connected to the Internet!

Even animals and people are to be provided with a URI which stands a uniform resource identifier– everything on the earth will have a certain resource identifier and it will be connected to the global computer network.